


close your eyes, i’ll be here in the morning

by keepitdreamin



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Foggy Nelson centric, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-08-25 02:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16652557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepitdreamin/pseuds/keepitdreamin
Summary: Following Matt's death, Foggy goes on a journey of self-discovery and starts making a new life for himself.And then Matt comes back.





	close your eyes, i’ll be here in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “I’ll Be Here in the Morning” by Townes Van Zandt. I really like the 10 String Symphony cover, so y’all should check that out.
> 
> I started writing this following Defenders because I wanted to know what Foggy would do after Matt died. The correct answer is apparently run for DA which is Very Good, but I wanted to go the way of him reevaluating his life, deciding he wasn’t happy, and then going on a journey of self discovery to find something that does make him happy.
> 
> And that’s where it should end except I couldn’t resist Matt’s miraculous return from the dead and what that would mean for Foggy’s new life.

So: Foggy leaves. He tries. He honestly, seriously _tries_ to continue working, to continue on with his life after Matt dies, but he just _can’t._  He talks to a therapist and his friends and tries to work through his grief in a “healthy” way but it’s like his life, everywhere he goes, everything he does, is haunted by the memory of Matt. They say time should make it easier but though he gets better at faking it, each day is just as hard as the last.

So: Six months after Matt’s funeral, he hands in his resignation, packs up all the shit he actually needs, sends the rest to Goodwill, and gets the hell out of town.

(He gets extraordinarily drunk with Marci the night after he quits and when she deposits him back at his half-empty apartment, she kisses his cheek. “I hope you can find what you’re looking for,” she says in a moment of total sincerity. Foggy blinks back tears because he’s going to miss her _desperately_ and pulls her into a tight hug. His ‘me too’ is unspoken but understood.)

 

He sets out on a whistle stop tour of America, visiting his siblings and his cousins and basically everywhere a Nelson has settled down which is… basically everywhere. He gets an old car from an uncle and just goes wherever the wind takes him. It’s easier to adapt to this new rhythm, new experiences and challenges, than it was to pick up his old life.

His family worries about him. They don’t really come out and _say_ it often, but it’s there in the undercurrent of conversations. He appreciates it; he’s a little worried about himself too.

He stops faking, stops caring what strangers at rest stops and gas stations think of him. He lets himself feel sad, and somewhere along the way he realizes that he can just _be_ happy sometimes, without faking it. The balance is delicate and difficult and some days are worse than others but he’s figuring it out.

Somewhere in Florida, Foggy decides to stop drinking. He doesn’t have a problem per se, not yet at least, and it’s that ever present “yet” that pushes the decision. If Foggy has a drink because he’s sad, and he’s almost always at least a little sad, that’s the start down a bad path. As far as revelations go, it’s not an especially dramatic one. He’s in a bar, he’s already had one drink, and he’s waiting for the bartender to finish serving somebody else when he realizes how easy it would be for him to get this next drink and just never stop. He leaves the cash at the register and is gone before the bartender turns back around.

He likes small towns the best, staying on for a few weeks and picking up odd jobs here and there. It’s quiet in a way Foggy, born and raised city boy, had never been able to appreciate before. He learns to enjoy time with just himself. He thinks a lot and his brother sends him podcasts and audiobooks to pass the time when he _doesn’t_ want to be to deep in his own head.

He lets his beard grow out and then his hair to match. One of his niece’s says he looks like a lumberjack and his sister says he looks like a hipster portland barista. He’s cool with either. He gets more tattoos because he likes them, likes something constant on his skin with the changing surroundings.

 

Time flies and eventually he’s a few years older, a few near world ending catastrophes in his rear view, and he settles down again in a small town in West Virginia with a population barely over a thousand. He’d been through there a few times, and he’d fallen in love with the people and the land and the community. So when he starts feeling like he’s done all he can do on his road trip, when he starts longing for someplace to call his own, he already has a place in mind.

He gets a steady job working for the butcher, and his mom laughs _hard_ when he tells her. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough to pay for food and the room he rents. And, anyways, he hasn’t really been worried about money since New York because Matt, the absolute _madman,_ had left everything to Foggy, including somehow a fairly substantial life insurance policy. He doesn’t touch Matt’s money unless it’s an emergency (car broke down stranding him in Arizona, unexpected hospital stays, that type of thing) but it’s a nice safety net.

The years pass again. The butcher retires, leaving Foggy to take over. He volunteers at the community center down the street on the weekends. He has friendly chit chat with the neighbors and goes to potluck dinners.

He buys a house. It’s small, one story, three bedrooms--well two and a small office that _could_ be a bedroom. It’s nothing special but it’s got a nice backyard with a treehouse left over from kids long gone that Foggy spends a few months working on, replacing old wood, strengthening here and there, till he can go up whenever he wants. He puts a small garden up there, a secret just for him.

He gets a cat on accident, and a dog on purpose. The cat is a stray that starts hanging out around his back porch till finally he just starts getting food for it. It doesn’t have a collar or a chip, and it’s a little beat up. A tail shorter than it should be, an ear almost gone, missing an eye (that, the vet tells him, is actually a birth defect, not from a brawl, but still). Foggy lets her in one night when it’s starting to drop to freezing, and after that she just never leaves.

The dog happens when he’s watching two of his nieces for a few weeks over the summer while their parents are on a second honeymoon. They love the cat (he calls her Cat which they think is silly) and the secret treehouse garden and the whole town, but they think it’s missing something. “Your yards too big,” Elizabeth says critically, hands on hips and looking out over it. “You need a dog.” Katey agrees wholeheartedly and the next day, Foggy finds himself being bullied into going to the animal shelter and being overrun with puppies. The girls fall in love with one immediately (as does Foggy) and that’s how he ends up with a rambunctious two year old golden lab mix named Atlas.

He makes friends, he goes on a few dates, he lives his life, he’s happy.

He thinks about Matt every day.

 

Foggy’s in the treehouse garden repotting some plants when Atlas starts to bark at the side gate. Somebody must have pulled up: maybe it’s his neighbor Grace, returning the fryer she’d borrowed last week, or maybe it’s Girl Scout cookie season already. Foggy climbs down, wipes his dirty hands on his jeans and heads back into the house where yeah, he can hear somebody knocking. “Just a second!” he calls and gently shoves the dog back out the screen door, so he won’t start jumping on whoever it is.

Foggy opens the door, and his greeting dies on his lips. Because, standing there, right in front of him, in the flesh and blood, is _Matt_ . All he can do is stare at Matt, who looks older, more tired, but still _him_ . Still _alive_ somehow. Matt for his part, seems equally stunned into silence even though he was the one who showed up _here_. There’s two beat up duffel bags by Matt’s side and vaguely Foggy is aware of a car at the curb pulling away--Matt’s ride probably.

Cat is the one who breaks the ice. She creeps out from behind Foggy and beelines straight for Matt’s legs, which she twists between with a loud purr. Matt startles, and it’s enough for Foggy to crack a shaky grin. “She usually doesn’t take to people that quickly,” he says, and Matt smiles down at her, and then back up at him. If this is a dream, Foggy doesn’t want to wake up.

“I’m honored,” Matt says and it’s his _voice_ that shatters the camel’s back. Foggy can feel the pinpricks of tears forming, and he can’t imagine how to explain having a full on breakdown on his front porch to his neighbors so he steps back and gestures vaguely. “Come on in.” Matt smiles and, grabbing his bags, follows Foggy in.

Foggy is fumbling on what to do now. “Um,” he says, walking through to the living room, grasping for any social niceties that can make this whole interaction make sense, “can I get you a water or tea or something? I’d offer something stronger, but, uh, I don’t keep anything on hand.”

“Water would be great,” Matt says, possibly taking pity on him, and Foggy goes to the kitchen, happy to have a goal, a tangible task he can focus on.

As he pours the glass of water, he realizes his hands are shaking. He sets the glass down, gripping the counter to steady his hands and takes a few deep breaths. Everything feels surreal, like he’s about to rip apart at the seams on a wrong move. When he turns, Matt’s there in front of him--as silent as ever--looking a lot like how Foggy feels, open, vulnerable.

“Foggy, can I…?” he half-asks, raising an arm and Foggy doesn’t hesitate, just steps into him so Matt can grab his arm, and then he’s pulled into a tight hug. He buries his head in Matt’s shoulder, and it’s _Matt_ and it’s _home_ and he doesn’t try to stop the tears that finally trickle down his face.

“You have a beard,” Matt says a long while later, long enough even that Cat has given up on getting attention and wandered away.

Foggy’s laugh is a little broken, but it’s still there. “So do you.” Not as thick as Foggy’s, not even close, but it’s there and speckled with gray. They’re still hugging. Foggy doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to stop.

Matt hums. “And you grew out your hair again.”

“Yeah well, once I left the world of corporate law, there wasn’t much of a reason to keep it short.”

Finally, what feels like an eternity later and still not long enough, Foggy makes himself pull back, but still keeping his hands on Matt’s shoulders. “Matt,” he asks quietly, “what are you doing here? _How_ are you here?”

Matt pulls a distinctly _Matt_ face and Foggy has to keep from laughing or crying again because god he missed this. “It’s a… it’s a long story.”

They talk late into the night. Almost 10 years to catch up for both of them, and while Foggy was traveling the country, Matt was dealing with a weird magic otherworld (he calls it another realm and vehemently denies it as any kind of ‘afterlife’ that’s a Catholic for you) and a coma after making it back and then continuing to help people when he recovered.

They wind up slumped on Foggy’s couch, leaning heavily into each other. Every time they’ve stopped touching during the evening, they’ve gravitated back to each other within minutes. Foggy’s head is basically on Matt’s stomach, and Matt has a hand carding through his hair while he talks about some of the nicer things that happened in their time apart (Foggy’s inordinately glad Matt wasn’t miserable the whole time, that he still had friends and support and good things). Cat is curled up on the back of the couch and Atlas is laying beside them on the floor. (Atlas took to Matt instantly and Foggy’s weirdly happy his pets are as hopelessly enamored with Matt as he is.)

Foggy’s been yawning heavily for the last hour and now it’s a struggle to keep his eyes open, so he doesn’t, letting himself bask in the warmth and smell and feel and sound of Matt again. “Please don’t leave again,” Foggy mumbles sleepily.

Matt pauses for a moment and then his hand falls heavily on Foggy’s neck. “I won’t,” he says like a promise and Foggy falls asleep a moment later.

Foggy wakes up with a terrible crick in his neck, his dog whining at the door, and his cat biting at his nose. He’s the happiest he’s ever been because his head is still on Matt’s lap.

 

“I’m retired. For good,” Matt says abruptly a few days later when they’re taking Atlas on a walk down a nice wooded trail, and Foggy believes him. Matt has lied to him before about the Daredevil business, he has reason to _not_ trust this, but he does anyway. Maybe it’s the way that Matt sounds kind of sad about it. Like he’s accepted it but not that happy about it.

“So what are you going to do now?” Foggy’s deliberately avoided asking this question since Matt showed up but he knew it couldn’t be avoided forever. He supposes there must be a market for _training_ new vigilantes (part of what Matt had done during the 10 years) that could count as being retired, and of course there’s always law but it would be a hell of a time coming back from the dead legally enough to even get to that point.

Matt rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Well, I heard about this little town. Nice, quiet, hardly any crime? Thought I might try, I don’t know, settling down there?”

“Are you serious?” Foggy stops in his tracks, hardly daring to believe it.

“I’ve lived in a city my whole life. Maybe it’s time to give the country a try?” And Foggy pulls him into another hug. They stay hugging till Atlas has run around them a few times and tangled the leash up with their legs and they laugh and disentangle while Atlas jumps around and is generally unhelpful

 

Matt stays. He goes to the farmer’s market with Foggy and charms all the vendors. He volunteers, both with and without, Foggy. He walks Atlas when Foggy’s at work, and when Foggy comes home, he’s chilling with Cat.

It’s a little hard to explain to the friends he made here, the ones who know at least a little bit of the story, who know Matt only as his best friend who died. But they come up with another story together. There hadn’t been a body, so it’s easy enough to believe that Matt had gotten out but concussed, disoriented and injured, he’d wandered around (with amnesia?) for a while till he got in _another_ accident and wound up in a coma. Nobody had known who he was but some mysterious benefactor had paid for his care so he was kept alive. And then one day he’d woken up and immediately comes to find Foggy. Some of them call it a miracle, some of them whisper that it’s a great plot to a romantic movie, and they all welcome Matt with open arms.

Matt gets a job at the library, part time, doing story hour and crafts. He’s wrangled into by somebody when he’s volunteering with Foggy at the community center, and he loves it so much and is so good at it, that he’s hired on the spot. Foggy comes too sometimes, helping out or just peeking in to watch Matt having _fun_. It’s a position normally reserved for the librarians but the library had been short staffed for years so they’re more than willing to put Matt on the payroll for his work.

Matt stays in one of the guest rooms except on his Bad Nights. Even though there’s less people, and far less crime out here, Matt’s senses still get overwhelmed. When that happens, he crawls into bed with Foggy, and Foggy holds him, let’s him press his head to his chest to concentrate on his heartbeat, just talks about nonsense if that’s what he needs.

On Foggy’s Bad Nights, when he wakes up from nightmares, trembling and sweaty, he gets out of bed and gets a glass of water. Then he sits on the couch and turns to the TV onto whatever dumb sitcom is playing, and a few minutes later Matt comes out to join him. They fall asleep together on the couch, sometimes touching, sometimes not.

They get to know each other again. Sometimes it’s like slipping into old well worn grooves, and sometimes there’s new jagged edges to explore and maybe smooth down. It’s a process, it’s work, it’s not always nice, they’re not always happy, and Foggy wouldn’t trade it for the world.

 

It’s a peaceful early afternoon almost a year after Matt moved in. They’ve had lunch a while ago and Matt’s laying on the couch with Cat across his stomach petting her absently while Foggy’s in the kitchen prepping veggies for dinner. There’s a podcast playing and they’ve been listening and talking and just existing in this companionable domesticity they’ve created over the months. Foggy’s warm and happy and he looks over at Matt and says, “I love you, you know.”

Matt’s hand pauses for a second, but then he smiles, a small shy thing. “I love you too.”

Foggy nods and goes back to his chopping. “Cool, long as we’re on the same page here.”

Later in the early evening, Matt’s gardening (he’s taken over the small plot of vegetables that Foggy was trying to grow behind the house like it’s his job) and Foggy brings him out a glass of sweet tea. Foggy can’t stand the stuff but Matt’s taken to it like he’s a hummingbird so they always have some on hand.

Matt sits back on his heels, wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist, and smiles up at Foggy. “Thanks.” He stands to take the glass and drains it in a few swallows. Foggy takes the glass back, looks at it, looks at Matt and then steps closer, leaning in for a kiss which Matt easily reciprocates. It’s slow, gentle, sweet and the best kiss Foggy has ever had, familiar, like coming home.

“You know,” he says when he pulls away, licking his lips, “I think I might start liking sweet tea.”

Matt laughs, and it's clear and bright in the summer air.


End file.
